"The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program creates science-based recommendations that help consumers and businesses make ocean-friendly seafood choices."
The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a program called Seafood Watch that publishes consumer guides. I used to carry around a business-card sized version. Now they have versions for different US regions and one for sushi...
In the UK, supermarkets display the MSC logo on frozen fish products to indicate the fish is sustainably sourced. They did a recent Good Fish Fingers guide for 2018 (UK only):
One thing I found helpful is the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch iOS app[0]. Fancy some fatty tuna? Salmon? Look it up, find out if it's ocean-friendly. It opened my eyes to things I thought might be good (farmed salmon, right? Leaves the wild salmon alone?) that actually were quite bad (nope, salmon farms spew all kinds of nasty waste).
I wanted to emphasize that the final part of the article links to Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch, which is a great way to identify which fish are coming from a sustainable fishery, and are okay to eat: https://www.seafoodwatch.org/
Yes. The Monterey Bay Aquarium ranks fish based on sustainability and publishes the lists as pocket guides. I always carry it with me when I go to the market. The list is at http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.aspx if you're interested.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium has an excellent guide to sustainable fish, web searchable, printable and as Android and iOS apps. They also distinguish between farmed, wild caught and if appropriate method of catch:
If you're interested in adjusting your seafood eating habits towards eating more sustainable seafood, the Monterey Bay Aquarium maintains a guide on which seafood (based on species and location/method of catch) is most sustainable, somewhat sustainable, and not sustainable.
That's where the "research" bit comes in. Take that report to your fish-monger[1] and ask him about it. If he has a strong opinion about it he's probably a keeper. If not, ditch him and get your fish from somewhere else. Again, check online vendors.
https://seafood.ocean.org/ is a good international alternative; for example, Ocean Wise logos can be found on many menus in Vancouver and other Canadian cities.
This is a silly list. Not because fish aren't important, but because there's no way to take action on this list. Studies have shown that a huge amount of fish is mislabelled. Yes, pick up a piece of xxxx from a seafood market and the odds are that it's not xxxx.
Consumers have no effective way to verify what they're eating. This is a situation where there is either government action or no action; no private personal actions can be successful, barring the creation of instant cheap at-the-restaurant-table DNA analysis.
US: https://www.seafoodwatch.org/
UK: https://www.mcsuk.org/goodfishguide/search
Both have mobile apps I believe.
reply